What is Emotionally Intelligent Coaching?

Melody Cheal MSc

I wonder if you see the ambiguity in the title, what is Emotionally Intelligent Coaching? Today I am introducing a topic that is important for you both as a Coach and a Client. In order to help others with Emotional Intelligence you need to be self-aware yourself. I will be discussing both how to be an Emotionally Intelligent Coach and how to do Emotionally Intelligent Coaching.

Do you get the ambiguity now?

Most people these days have heard the term Emotionally Intelligent or Emotional Intelligence but I wonder if you have a good understanding of what it means?

When I studied for my MSc in Applied Positive Psychology one of the topics I took a particular interest in was Emotional Intelligence. I decided to expand my learning by adding the MSCEIT psychometric to my offering.

This is the Emotional Intelligence psychometric designed by Mayer, Salovey and Caruso. I was fortunate enough to train with David Caruso himself (not the one from Miami CSI).

Their model in my opinion is the most useful available to help understand the many aspects of Emotional Intelligence. As a Coach you need to understand Emotional Intelligence on two levels, the first is as a self-awareness tool and the second is in relation to helping your clients develop their own awareness.

Over the next couple of weeks I will share with you some tips and ideas drawn from the four branches of Emotional Intelligence as laid out by Mayer et al:

  • Perceiving or recognising emotions in self and others.
  • Using emotions to facilitate thinking (knowing how emotions influence our thinking and being able to use them more effectively).
  • Understanding emotions including being able to predict emotional reactions in self and others.
  • Managing emotions is self and others. This is probably the aspect of emotional intelligence clients most often ask me to help them with.

I will also share a little about how the MSCEIT works and how it can be used to help you or your clients understand themselves more.

Note

This is all covered in more detail in the next module of my Accredited Coaching Diploma, Positive Psychology Coaching Module Two. You can attend just this module or sign up for the whole Diploma. Contact me for more details.